PICTURES: Pennsylvania's last coal breaker is coming down

READING ANTHRACITE / AP

In this 1933 photo provided by Reading Anthracite, workers inspect coal cars at the St. Nicholas Coal Breaker in Mahanoy City, Pa. In the early 20th century, St. Nicholas opened as the crown jewel of a relatively safer, more modern anthracite industry. The breaker and its twin at Locus Summit operated around the clock to meet the nation's dwindling but still substantial need for anthracite.

In this 1933 photo provided by Reading Anthracite, workers inspect coal cars at the St. Nicholas Coal Breaker in Mahanoy City, Pa. In the early 20th century, St. Nicholas opened as the crown jewel of a relatively safer, more modern anthracite industry. The breaker and its twin at Locus Summit operated around the clock to meet the nation's dwindling but still substantial need for anthracite.

Rich Morgan, with Reading Anthracite, looks over a mining site near the St. Nicholas Coal Breaker in Mahanoy City, Pa. Modern anthracite plants, like the one operated by Reading Anthracite a mile from St. Nicholas, process about 2 million tons a year for home heating, steelmaking and other specialty uses but require very few workers to operate. Production overall is a fraction of what it was when St. Nicholas operated around the clock.

Rich Morgan, with Reading Anthracite, looks over a mining site near the St. Nicholas Coal Breaker in Mahanoy City, Pa. Modern anthracite plants, like the one operated by Reading Anthracite a mile from St. Nicholas, process about 2 million tons a year for home heating, steelmaking and other specialty uses but require very few workers to operate. Production overall is a fraction of what it was when St. Nicholas operated around the clock.

Only one breaker built during the historic era of anthracite mining in Pennsylvania remains standing. The St. Nicholas Breaker in Mahanoy City once held the distinction as the largest in the world, it now blights an area whose economy never fully recovered after anthracite's reign came to an end, and it's coming down.